why pay them at all

7/31/2019 Why Pay Them At All

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Why Pay Them At All? An attempt at paying politicians what they deserve.

There have been systems in the past that have not paid their politicians,

and the philosophy behind this is usually split between two schools of thought,

but the two ideas are sometimes combined. The main philosophy that supports

not paying politicians at all is feudalism. In this model the political entities are

made so powerful that they can – through political means- raise more than

enough money for themselves and the taxes they must pay to the kingdom.

This is known in the modern world as rampant corruption. The other

philosophy that supports not paying politicians is that paid positions attract

those who seek wealth, but volunteer positions attract those who are more

generous and moral.

This second philosophy has largely been seen for the sham that it is, forpolitical positions can be sought for power or title even without pay, two deeply

egotistical reasons. Futhermore, and most importantly, if politicians are not

paid then only the already wealthy can afford to run for office, and only those

wealthy and established enough to retire could remain in office long enough to

effect real change. The exception of course is in the case of corruption, where

there would be no official pay, but the political power of the office affords the

politician what the need to survive.

A balance needs to be struck between paying politicians in order to allow

anyone to run for office, but not paying them so much that a wealthy businessman would put his career on hold for the more lucrative aim of running the

country. As most politicians are very wealthy and deal in millions and billions

of dollars it is very difficult for them to have a solid understanding of what a

“good wage” is. Luckily, there is a more objective way to measure this than

popular opinion or seeing how long it takes the average bureaucrat to chew

through $100 000.

The median income of a region refers to how much money the people

exactly in the halfway point of the income distribution get paid. It differs from

average income in a very important way, in that the average represents howmuch money everyone would make if the total income of the region were split

exactly equally. For example, in a region where 10 people make $12 000 each

year and one person makes $400 000, the median would be only $12 000,

whereas the average would be $47 272. Someone making the average wage in

that region would be doing just fine, but someone making the median (like 91%

of people) would be on the poverty line.



Using the median wage rather than the average gives politicians a better,

more objective idea of how good of a job they are doing, if their job is in fact to

alleviate poverty, aid the citizenry and improve the quality of life while

upholding the law. If their job is to be making as much money as possible then

the average is a good enough measure, and they’re all doing an astoundingly

good job.

I propose tying the pay rate of politicians to their regional median

incomes for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, as I have stated, it is a

reasonable measure of their success. Furthermore, if the median income is so

deplorable in comparison to the income of the elite that they would not

consider a political career, all the better! With a median income that

dramatically low the region has almost definitely dealt with far too many rich

politicians anyway. The pay would be higher than the income of a full half of

the region’s inhabitants though, ensuring that there is always a large andstrong base citizenry from which to pull the political class. Furthermore, if the

median income is so incredibly low that it would approach the poverty line one

must always remember; that means a full half of the population is living below

that, willing to upgrade to that, and in desperate need of someone with the

motivation and skills to raise it.

In various conversations I have had I have come across a few counter

arguments to this pay system. Mostly they include people who think politicians

work harder than the average person, and so should be paid more. My first

rebuttal to that is that if the average person works harder they are rarely (if ever) paid more for it. My second argument is that politicians should be

intrinsically motivated to work hard, and in fact it has been proven repeatedly

that after a base income is established money is a poor incentive and negligent

motivator. What we really want are politicians willing to work to raise their own

income by raising the median, or who are fuelled by ideologies and hope to

change the world, what we get by paying them so much more is a room full of

squabbling bureaucrats trying to one-up each other.

One counter that I have considered for some time is that political office,

to be effective, must be powerful, and where there is power there is corruption.In a system with such corruption one cannot use the pay scale to incentivize

morality because clever people will simply find a better way around it. This is

true, and unfortunately nothing reasonable can be done to bar knifing people

from politics, but if the politicians’ income is restricted to the median income of

the region, that is to say that he is barred from using or accepting any other

monies while in office (and possibly afterwards as well), then it will be made



more difficult for him to abuse the system. Other precautions could be put in

place to close loop-holes and gradually elect more moral people, willing to close

more loop-holes, until finally politics is simply less lucrative and more time and

energy consuming than regular business.

There are regions where this model would work if simply applied to thecurrent structure, and there are, of course, adjustments and tweaks that

would have to be made for regional and demographic issues, but overall the

system could be applied to any size region, from municipality to multi-national

governing bodies. In some places the corruption runs too deep and the system

would have to be overthrown for this one to be implemented. If that is the case

remember that those who do not want to make the median income are forcibly

the elite minority, and with a little time and elbow grease democracy can find

its way through the ballot box, parade, or the hand grenade.

why pay them at all

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